After Spend A Year In Rehab, These Heroin-addict Elephants In China Have Gone Clean

4 elephants were fed opium-laced bananas by heroin smugglers who used them to carry drugs across the border between China and Myanmar, and fed them opium to make them follow orders.

After the gangsters were caught and their elephants were sent to a sanctuary, keepers discovered some of the animals had become restless and wildly aggressive, so they run some tests on them, and 4 had traces of heroin in their system.

And now, after 1 year of treatment, they are recovered and have been released back into wild herds.

Keepers did not deal with this kind of situation before, so they used the same way as doctors do with humans. The approach is call cold turkey. It is the actions of a person who abruptly gives up a habit or addiction rather than gradually easing the process through gradual reduction or by using replacement medication. The supposed advantage is that by not actively using supplemental methods, the person avoids thinking about the habit and its temptation, and avoids further feeding the chemical addiction. (Wikipedia)

1. These four Indian elephants have been cured of their opium addictions after being given a year-long course of methadone

2. Keepers said the animals became aggressive when they were deprived of opium-laced bananas

3. Unsure how to treat the animals, keepers took the same approach as doctors do with humans, Cold trukey

4. Rehabilitated elephants at the sanctuary welcome Xiguang, one of the rescue animals (right)

5. All four elephants have now been released from the sanctuary (pictured) and back into the forest